


Le Petit Prix

by scarlett_the_seachild



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cafe AU, Modern Era, Multi, basically too much politics in my veins, poor girl meets rich boy, trials and tribulations of the lower middle classes, who wants to live like common people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 23:09:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4324323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarlett_the_seachild/pseuds/scarlett_the_seachild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eponine had not banked on anyone breaching the walls she'd built round herself, and certainly not some clumsy, bumbling rich boy with a head full of boyish dreams and in need of help interpreting Oscar Wilde. But then, since when has life ever been fair?</p><p>In other words, socialist politics and frustration with my own country's situation is making me very boring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Le Petit Prix

**Author's Note:**

> I can't really think of any reason for writing this, except that I love Eponine and recent events have spurned on my desire for something angsty from her point of view. To me she represents the real people, the people who are actually suffering the hardest from neo-libertarian economics and even though I can't really do her character justice I do think there should be more fics with her as a center. Also her relationship with Marius just breaks my heart.  
> This was going to be just a oneshot but I do have an idea for where I'd take it, if you guys were up for more. At the most it would be no more than four chapters. Please let me know if you'd like me to continue!  
> Set in Paris, btw.

It starts, as these things often do, with a clash of opinions.

Eponine has been on her feet for the best part of six hours. It is a Friday and for some reason the café is swarming with white collars; office workers, commuters, businessmen, making to fill whatever time they can snatch from the machine with falafel wraps and plastic boxes of crayfish salad. Already it is three o’clock, the working day drawing to a close yet still there are people darting in and out, stopping for a cup of coffee before saddling their briefcases and shoulder bags and vanishing back out into the street, glass door swinging staggeredly behind them. Three o’clock, and she has been here since nine.

The clock on the wall, a big old mock-vintage piece with artfully flaking blue paint ticks ten past. Eponine huffs irritably, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Across the counter, Coralie gives her a sympathetic look.

“Twenty minutes,” she says encouragingly. “Just hold on a little longer.”

Eponine smiles back but thinks bitterly it is easy for her to say. When she agreed to cover the shift she had not realised she was doing a favour rather than making a deal. Apparently the other waitresses have become suddenly aware of the number of times Eponine has been “off sick” or missed shifts and the sly bitches never hesitate to use such knowledge to their advantage. Eponine can’t really blame them; everyone has stories of their own after all. Numbers tucked into apron pockets, packets of pearl-white pills hidden in crannies people don’t think to look, a child’s colouring book, a black eye. Behind-the-counter is a living breathing organism made up of lies, gossip and cold, calculated bargaining. Forget politics, the world of the waitress can be ruthlessly Machiavellian.

“I feel like I’ve become one with the café,” Eponine groans, stretching out like a cat along the counter’s smooth, polished surface. Her feet feel welded to the floorboards; soon her skin will turn to Laura Ashley wallpaper and her eyes to mini chalkboards.

Coralie chuckles. “Careful,” she warns, moving a cling-film wrapped Victoria sponge away from the jut of her elbows. “Accidents are expensive.”

“Don’t I know it,” Eponine murmurs, closing her eyes and settling her head on the triangle of her arms. She’d never have dared such lethargy if it had been busy but after the rush it seems they have reached a brief moment of calm – there is no one here but for a couple of old dears gossiping over their digestives and a young man hunched in the corner.

“Josephine dropped a tray yesterday,” Coralie continues. “`de Terre docked her _half a week’s_ wage. For a teapot and two croissants.”

Eponine knows what is expected so she makes a suitable noise of outrage but it came out half-hearted. Inwardly she wonders why people feel the need to act so surprised whenever their boss, nicknamed `de Terre for his round, pockmarked complexion, exhibits further evidence that he is, in fact, a perfect wanker.

“Going to the Musain today?” Coralie asks conversationally.

Eponine shakes her head. “Got to pick Gav up from school,” she replies.

Coralie nods. The young man in the corner sneezes into his napkin. The sound provokes Eponine into lifting her head off her arms to give him a hard look. Coralie raises her eyebrows and nods in his direction. “He’s been here a long time.”

Eponine squints into the dark corner and wonders why she has not noticed him before. He sits with his back hunched self-consciously, as though afraid of being seen, and his face is mostly obscured by the book held uneasily in front of him. He wears a navy woollen coat with a high collar, clearly expensive but not ostentatiously so, as if it were trying to pretend otherwise along with gloves and a blue striped scarf, despite the café’s foggy, slightly suppressive warmth. On the table is a single-serving teapot and a cup, the contents of which must long have grown cold by now, and Eponine realises he must have been sat there since Coralie began her shift.

“I’ll see if he wants anything,” she says and Coralie nods absently, returning to the glass she had been drying.

The young man does not look up as she approaches but remains immersed in his book, eyes shooting from one side of the page to the other with an expression of deep concentration. Eponine clears her throat and he starts, almost dropping the thing in his lap and knocking over a salt shaker.

“Sorry,” he says immediately, setting the thing down on a teaspoon which subsequently leaps into the air and lands with a small clatter onto the floor. “Oh gosh here we go, I’m sorry, I’m such a klutz today-”

“-Don’t apologise,” replies Eponine, trying and failing to keep the amusement out of her voice. She gestures to the book that has somehow slipped into the small pool of tea left in the saucer. “Good book?”

“Uh well, yes,” he answers, rescuing it gingerly from the puddle. “Although, if truth be told, I’m having a little trouble understanding it.”

“What is it?” asks Eponine.

The young man lifts the book to reveal the cover. _The Picture of Dorian Grey_ shines from matt black in gleaming silver letters. Eponine smiles. _“_ I studied that in high school,” she says. “What don’t you get?”

“Oh, well,” the man…boy, really, clears his throat awkwardly. “I suppose the story’s simple enough. But I find the language obscures some of the finer points…the ideas I mean. I feel like I’m missing something. For example, all this about aestheticism and the relationship between…between the artist and the…the subject. I understand he’s trying to tell me something but…well…for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is.”

At this he smiles ruefully, almost apologetically. A nice smile, Eponine thinks, if a little humble. Humility confuses her, she doesn’t come across it often. Especially not from good looking boys in nice coats and Ted Baker scarves.

“Do you mean that bit when Basil’s explaining to Henry why he likes Dorian so much?” she says. “I think he’s basically saying that the work reflects the artist. So when Basil paints Dorian he sees himself as he’d like to be, or, like, he sees all his best...what do you call it…attributes, like, thrown back at him. He thinks of Dorian as his soul, beautiful and youthful and virtuous and everything, which is why it upsets him so much when he goes all evil and corrupted. But he’s also really jealous over him because he sees himself through the painting…so painting him is really an expression of vanity.”

Wait, was that right? Eponine shakes her head, struggling to recapture snatches of classroom discussion from many years ago. “I think,” she finishes. “I dunno. It’s been a while since I read it.”

“No, no, that’s…gosh, well, it’s more than I picked up on,” the young man shakes his head modestly. “I think I just assumed that Basil had a bit of a crush on him or something-”

“-Oh he definitely does,” Eponine interrupts him. “He’s a raging gay for him. Except he doesn’t want to go there cos he thinks it’ll, like, ‘corrupt his image’ of him or something. But yeah. He’s totally horny. They all were back then, those Victorians. Especially artists. All that repressed tension, you know?”

“Uh…well, yes I suppose,” he sputters and Eponine sees the back of his neck and ears, as well as his cheeks, are glowing faintly pink.

Eponine, suddenly realising that she has been talking Victorian homosexuality to a complete stranger, starts looking for her internal filter. “Anyway,” she says. “I’ll let you get back to your reading. Can I get you anything? More tea?”

“Erm,” the young man lifts the lid of the teapot and looks vaguely surprised to find it cold. “Uh, yes. That would be lovely, thank you.”

Eponine clears the dirty crockery from the table and wipes away the spills; the boy makes an attempt to help with a napkin but then seems to remember that she actually gets _paid_ for this and isn’t acting out of charity so he sits back meekly and blinks at her until she retreats with the sodden napkin and a tea tray.

After returning with a fresh pot and cup, setting it carefully out of the way of the boy’s sprawling limbs, she slips back behind the counter and takes another look at the clock. Quarter past. She yawns and bends backwards, producing a loud and satisfying _click._

“Fuck it,” she says decisively. “What’s fifteen minutes. I’m going home.”

She reaches for her coat and is halfway out the door, Coralie’s “See you later” ringing merrily in her ears when another voice stops her in her tracks, like the crack of a whip. Eponine turns round slowly to see `de Terre himself standing in the doorway to the kitchen, his enormous girth taking up most of the space within the frame.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he snarls.

She is familiar with how he likes to set his traps, fixing the air with rhetorical questions before going in for the kill. Usually she would reply with something cutting or passive aggressive but not today, after six hours of carrying trays and wiping crumbs her capacity for wit is running low, and she is in no mood for bullshit. “Home,” she answers instead.

“I don’t think so,” says `de Terre, emerging from the shadow of the door and folding his arms across his chest. He is a fat man and ugly; bulbous, blood-shot eyes glaring from a pouchy face still scarred with the marks of adolescence. If it were any other man the nickname would be cruel in drawing attention to this, however Eponine feels no qualms of conscience as his lip curls in disdain, revealing cigarette-stained teeth. “We close at five.”

“I’ve been here since morning,” Eponine bites back. “I’ve done two shifts and I need to pick up my brother.”

“You should have thought about that before taking Tuesday off,” her boss retorts. “And Thursday. Not to mention your little holiday the week before. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

Eponine makes to shoot Coralie a fierce look but she seems to have mysteriously retreated into the kitchen. `de Terre spends as little time as possible in his own establishment, preferring to leave the running of things to some of the longer-term employees. Clearly someone has gone tale-telling for bonuses _probably that slut Adele,_ she thinks savagely, remembering her sly little eyes stalking tips from table to pocket.

“You know my situation,” Eponine says through gritted teeth. “Gavroche was sick last week with glandular fever. On Tuesday he had another spell, I had to take him home. And Thursday-”

Well. Thursday was a different matter, and one she isn’t particularly willing to share with her boss. She keeps a mental list of the favours Montparnasse owes her; if she’s fired today she’s not afraid to double it.

Her silence is not particularly endearing. `de Terre looks smug, his upper lip retreating towards his nostril and Eponine wants to slice his hideous face with a cake knife. “Monsieur,” she begins with feigned courtesy. “Please. I’m perfectly happy to give up my Saturday-”

“-We don’t need you on Saturday,” the awful man simpers.

 _“Monsieur,”_ snaps Eponine, all pretence at politeness lost in a sudden flare of fury. “On an average day I work eight hours with a break for lunch and a shift change. Today I have had neither, so excuse me if I feel a little run down. What I would like to do, most days, when I get home is take a shower and wash the stink of your greasy, box-packaged, ersatz- homemade chain-food out of my hair, put my feet up and maybe watch some shitty TV for an hour or so before I have to go out again and work night shifts at a bar where old men throw olives at my breasts. That’s if, by some miracle of God, I’ve found a way to pay the television bill that doesn’t land my brother with eating pickle sandwiches in his packed lunch for the next week and a half-”

“-Perhaps you’d find it easier if you were a little less generous to the Bargain Booze with your wages,” `de Terre cuts in, pouchy eyes blazing.

Behind the closed door comes a sharp intake of breath and she knows Coralie is listening. Strangely she feels her eyes drawn to the young man in the corner who appears to be deeply immersed in his novel, although his eyes no longer follow the page but stare fixedly and straight. Eponine feels herself colour.

“Bastard,” she hisses, her voice low and deadly. “You have no right.”

It is the kind of voice that sends chills creeping up spines, the voice she uses on her landlord and her mother. In the past she has broken many a man into a sweat when she speaks like this. To his credit however `de Terre stands his ground, although she notices the movement of his gullet as a gulp slithers down.

“What do you think this is?” he snarls and flecks of saliva hit her cheek. “Some kind of Outreach programme? I run a _business,_ not an Alphabet Agency. And let me tell you, word gets around Miss _Thernadier._ Do you think you are irreplaceable? Think again. There are just as many of you as I could pick up off the street.”

Eponine opens her mouth to answer furiously but her words fall short as he raises his palm, “Another word and you’re fired,” is what he says.

Eponine closes her mouth and the words die in her throat. This is probably a good thing, all things considered. She is not sure how much she can get away with saying before the situation escalates into a court case. Of course, if that were the only thing at stake she would say it all without taking a second breath. But she needs this job, and what’s more, the sonofabitch knows it. So she closes her mouth and forces her gaze to the floor.

“That’s better,” `de Terre smirks, smug triumph riddled in every pore. “And if you behave yourself for the next,” he glances at the clock, ticking away nonchalantly above their heads. “Two hours I’ll forgive that little outburst. And I think I will see you Saturday after all. You never know, we could do with your help. I’m predicting a bit of a boom.”

With a last sardonic smile he retreats back into the shadows, like a creature of the darkness but for his prominent stomach, the last of him to vanish. And Eponine has been angrier than this before of course she has; with a life like hers she has experienced her fair share of hardship and injustice but at this moment she cannot remember a point when she has felt more like screaming until her lungs feel raw and the roof of this pathetic establishment collapses and covers every cuboid-shaped brownie in dusty fine debris.

The young man in the corner is looking at her, glancing furtively from over the top of his novel and suddenly she feels a great, irrational fury, towards him or herself she cannot tell, she only knows that it radiates her cheeks until she feels herself a shining pink beacon and beneath her feet is hot, bubbling water.

She waits as long as she possibly can before marching over to him. The heat inside her has reached boiling point, she has to bring it out on someone before she explodes. “Finished?” she says aggressively and proceeds to clatter away his crockery, non-too gracefully.

The young man watches her with a tortured, bemused expression, as if torn between wanting to say something and darting out of the room as fast as his polished leather shoes can carry him. Finally, when the heavier objects have been transferred to the tray and are therefore less likely to hurt him, he rushes out: “That man cannot speak to you like that.”

Eponine raises an eyebrow. “I think he just did and…wait…nope. No hurtling thunderbolts yet.”

 “I am serious,” he says and he does look remarkably intense for someone who has spent the past five minutes hiding behind Oscar Wilde. “Legally he cannot talk to you in that way. You are an employee, he has a duty to ensure your comfort and safety within the workplace. Not only has he spoken to you in a way that is, quite frankly, shocking from someone of a managerial status but he has also attacked you with inappropriate personal remarks. People are taken to court for less.”

Eponine laughs hollowly. “Really,” she says. “On what,  _Engrenages_ _?”_

The young man does not laugh. Instead what he does is reach down beside him and withdraws a large black folder, bursting with dog-eared papers. He flicks through it swiftly until he stops, takes out one and hands it to her. Eponine skims over it quickly; from what she can make out there are a lot of pretty long, pretentious words and a few numbers. Not her kind of reading.

“Um, what am I supposed to be looking at?” she asks, for time-saving purposes.

“Articles L.1153-1 and L.1152-1 of the Labour Code,” he answers abruptly, as if waiting for the question. “Clearly states that in the event of sexual, moral or psychological harassment the employee must be reinstated or receive compensatory damages. Additionally, the employer is liable for its employees' mental health and must take measures to ensure that they work in a safe environment. Since such forms of harassment are misdemeanours, the prosecution limitation period is three complete years.”

“Whoa, easy there Vergès,” says Eponine, handing the paper back to him. “My boss may be a sleazy bell-end but I strongly doubt making me work an extra couple of hours counts as sexual harassment. Unless he likes to watch me bend over when sifting mouse shit from under the fridge which I have always strongly suspected-”

“-There are other forms of harassment,” the boy interrupts, ears glowing faintly pink again the little _cutie._ “Moral and psychological, and from that conversation I would definitely say some of his remarks crossed that line. If you were to file a complaint I would be more than happy to act as witness to the exchange-”

“-While I rock back and forth, speaking in tongues and eating flies out of my hair,” grins Eponine. “Such is the extent of deep-rooted psychological damage. Thank you, but no. I’ve dealt with arseholes all my life, I’m not about to admit defeat because this one happens to write my pay check.”

“I struggle to see how filing a complaint against personal misconduct constitutes as admitting defeat,” the young man frowns. “It’s just common justice in the workplace.”

And Eponine almost bursts out laughing because really, what planet is this guy living on? She struggles to think of a time when justice has ever been “common” for most ordinary people, let alone those who do actually have to work to put dinner on the table. Looking at him she wonders if he’s ever done a single day’s work in his life; what with his smooth, white, hands and their long fingers, his neatly trimmed nails, the crisp cut of his shirt collar beneath his navy coat.

“Right,” she says amusedly. “Ok. Look, I’m not sure what rock you’ve been living under but social justice isn’t really at the top of most agendas at the moment. Particularly not for the average Parisian corpocracy.”

“All the more reason to fight for it,” the boy replies heatedly, frown deepening.

Eponine smiles and there’s a little twinge of melancholy in it, beneath the condescension. “Maybe,” she says. “But for some us the cost runs a little too dear.”

She doesn’t say _No matter what they always win._ She doesn’t say _and when was the last time you risked you livelihood for principle?_ She doesn’t say _I need this job_ but something in her voice, a sort of hardened bitterness forces the boy to drop his gaze as colour creeps into his pale cheeks and once again Eponine feels a twinge of anger with herself. Here is a complete stranger, going out of his way to be a good Samaritan by offering to do a nice thing only to be repaid by having his ideals crushed by her jaded cynicism.

“Thank you though,” she offers reluctantly after enough time has gone by to make the silence awkward. “It’s very sweet of you to offer. But it’s fine. No one’s here anyway, except for you and the Talking Dead over there.”

She nods over to where the two old ladies are still sitting, apparently having exhausted every possible topic of conversation and going around again from the top. The young man grins. Eponine absently remembers that there is probably stuff she should be doing round the back but oh well, Coralie’s here and anyway, she’s sacrificed enough for one day.

“So how come you know all this law stuff?” she asks instead, pointing at the folder still laying open on the table. “Are you a student or something?”

“Uh yes actually,” the young man answers, hesitating as if he was unsure himself. “At Panthéon-Sorbonne.”

Eponine nods. She’d assumed that was the case, considering the length of time he’s been in here studying, but with only the book to go by she’d suspected English. “What made you choose law?” she asks.

“Oh God,” he closes his eyes and leans back in his chair, as if contemplating a deep philosophical matter. “How long have you got?”

The corner of Eponine’s mouth twitches. “More or less two hours.”

oOo

The boy’s name is Marius. He is the son of some “fairly wealthy people”, although Eponine notices his reluctance to offer a surname. Being in no place to judge, she lets it slide. He doesn’t mention what part of Paris he’s from either but she gathers he went to a rather prestigious private school and did well, as you would do if your grandfather was forever waving annual cheques in front of your nose, just to remind you of the _sacrifice_ he has made. The plot-twist comes when Marius hits his final year and decides he wants to study Sociology and perhaps maybe possibly be a social worker or something (his ears are burning vermillion; Eponine doesn’t know why, when she was 17 she’d wanted to be a weather lady.) Of course his grandfather blew a fuse, started screaming that he hadn’t spent however much for his only grandson to become a “lionised wet-nurse” and said that Marius would use his education on a proper degree. So being mathematically challenged Economics and Medicine were out, leaving Law as the only acceptable option.

He doesn’t mind really; he likes Law because it means he gets to write long essays and read a lot of heavy books filled with things like “the rights of man” and the “universal will”. Mostly he likes it because it means he gets to help people, in a real, practical way. And that was why he wanted to do social work anyway, to help shovel away some of the shit life has dealt these families. This way he can do the same thing; if he gets landed with a BMW and a golf cart at weekends well, all medicines have their side-effects. And he wants to keep his grandfather happy. The old man has done a lot for him.

“He sure sounds like a character,” says Eponine, stirring coffee foam with her finger. “I like the physical implications of you as a wet-nurse. Does he even know what a social worker is?”

Marius shakes his head amusedly. “The profession might have meant something different in his day, I don’t know,” he replies. “He’s pretty much set in his ways. Rather like the rest of my family, in fact.”

He blushes a little and Eponine smiles inwardly. He is embarrassed of his family for being too posh. Haha.

They talk for a while after that. Marius it turns out, having overcome his initial shyness is surprisingly open. He chats in his awkward, slightly bumbling way and Eponine listens and tries to keep the smile off her face. At some point it occurs to her that surely he has some place to be, he has been here for as long as she has, after all. But then he seems happy, going on about some guy called Montesquieu who wrote a book about contracts or something so she decides not to say anything, just sits and nods “Mhmm” like she totally knows what he’s talking about.

Five o’clock rolls around and before she knows it it’s dark outside, the windows of the café almost black apart from the orange light splayed across the window panes from the streetlamps, dripping down the glass like tracks of thin rain. There’s no way she’ll be able to come home and get to the bar on time, she might as well go straight from the café. She has already sent a quick text to Gavroche, although by now he knows that if she’s not at school by four-thirty he’s to head off to a friend’s house and wait until further instruction. She still feels a pang of regret that she won’t get some time with him before she has to head out again and she tells Marius as much.

“Who looks after him when you’re at the bar?” Marius frowns concernedly. Social worker instincts must be kicking in.

“Oh I just take him with me. He makes a killer tequila slammer,” Eponine shrugs then bursts out laughing at the look of horror on Marius’ face. “Honestly? Do you think I’m some kind of crazy monster? He stays at a friend’s, it’s usually only Friday nights. Otherwise Grantaire will look after him when he gets home. Like tonight.”

She has just sent the text and received a satirical thumbs up in response. Marius nods, although of course he can have no possible idea who Grantaire is. Eponine has a bad habit of assuming that Grantaire is someone everyone should just know. She has been accused many times of habitually bringing him up in conversation, regardless of context. She’s trying to rein it in but, you know. Old habits.

“Shit,” she exclaims, catching sight of the gleaming face of her phone. “Is that the time? As if I’ve just been sat here talking to you…I’m sorry, you must have somewhere to be…”

“Ah yes, the lonely joys of student accommodation,” Marius replies and the corner of his mouth curls upwards so Eponine guesses there is a joke in this.

Eponine glances over her shoulder. Coralie is nowhere to be seen, she might have left a good half an hour ago and no one would have been the wiser. “I should close up now,” she says, getting to her feet. “Thank you for making the time go less slowly and all.”

“Oh, not at all,” Marius replies, colouring a little. “I enjoyed the conversation…it was lovely to meet you.”

“You should come by again some time,” Eponine shrugs casually, as if she doesn’t really matter to her either way and the back of her neck isn’t feeling suddenly quite warm. “And I don’t mean that in a standard, automaton employee ‘please keep buying our plastic’ sort of way.”

Marius laughs. “I’ll be sure to,” he says and smiles.

Fifteen minutes later Eponine is waiting at the bus stop. A light rain has started, distorting puddles on the pavement with pools of light. Traffic moves past her in blurs of colour and her fingers curl around the crumpled edge of a napkin, on which a number is scrawled in blue-black ink and she thinks: _I could get used to a smile like that._

oOo

Grantaire is waiting up for her when she gets in, slumped halfway down the couch, brilliant blue eyes fixed on the television. The scattered remains of takeout lay piled high up on a corner of the carpet, a rickety Jenga tower of tinfoil and cardboard boxes. His eyes remain unseeingly glued to the screen as she walks in but he acknowledges her presence with a slight tilt of the beer bottle he has been nursing gently with his knuckles.

“Hey,” he greets her.

“Hey yourself,” she replies, collapsing onto the couch beside him. The room smells of burritos and old beer. She lets it crash over in waves, a sense of warmth and familiarity creeping over her. “What are we watching?”

Grantaire shrugs. “My best guess is either a Mad Max or a Bond,” he replies, taking a swig of the bottle. “I’ve been mostly asleep since the sex scene.”

Eponine nods absently and allows herself to curl up, head dropping lightly onto his reassuringly solid form. She can feel the rise and fall of him through the warm, sturdy muscle of his arm, like volcanic rock heated by magma. Her eyes drift close as her own breathing becomes regular.

“How’s Gav?” she murmurs against his t-shirt.

“Out like a light,” Grantaire answers. “He put himself to bed after Die Hard.”

“You two had fun then.”

“It’s been wild,” Grantaire chuckles. “That kid will never be lacking in stamina. I think he just about out-ate me.” He raises an eyebrow at Eponine, who is looking thoroughly settled and making ready to drift off on his shoulder. “Long day?” he asks, carding her hair through his fingers.

“Mhmm,”she murmurs absently.

“Good?”

“Not really. Met a nice boy.”

She feels rather than sees the other eyebrow go up. “Really,” he says, incredulous. “Tell me about him.”

“Not now,” Eponine yawns. “In the morning.”

With an effort she forces herself to sit up, realising with sudden certainty as she blinks blearily around the room how tired she really is. Grantaire seems to realise it too for he shifts to allow her to slide off his chest and get to her feet.

“Are you alright on the couch?” she asks stretching.

Grantaire pats the sagging arm rest fondly. “We are pretty well-acquainted,” he replies with a grin.

Eponine smiles back. “Don’t stay up too late,” she says with a meaningful look.

Grantaire follows her gaze to the beer bottle and grimaces. He swills it in front of her, to show that it is nearly empty. “Won’t be long.”

Eponine closes the living room door behind her, whispering a goodnight to Grantaire that also serves as a thank you. They’re both proud people and weird about emotions and feelings and anything that could be construed as weakness but she really is grateful for tonight, regardless of the numerous favours he owes her, and she hopes he knows it.

The hallway is dark, through the walls and floorboards she can feel the gentle vibration of breathing in sleep. She follows the sound to Gavroche’s bedroom, cautiously opening the door so as to make as little sound as possible. The kid lies fast asleep, cacooned in Spiderman duvet cover, a shock of dirty-blonde hair peeking out from the red and blue. She approaches his bedside, perching tentatively at the edge of the mattress. Once certain he is sufficiently unconscious she reaches out to smooth the curls rumpled across the pillow. A smile tugs at her mouth as she thinks that, were he awake, he would never let her do this. Gavroche was funny about affection. Clearly they share too much by way of genetics, or else Grantaire was far too big an influence.

“He’s a good kid,” came a voice; she looks over her shoulder to see Grantaire leaning against the doorframe. “You do well by him.”

“So do you,” Eponine smiles, adding “Daddy” sarcastically.

Grantaire chuckles, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck. “So this boy then,” he says, “Does he have a name?”

Absently Eponine nods, tucking the duvet more firmly around Gavroche’s skinny form. “Marius,” she answers into the dark. “His name is Marius.”

**Author's Note:**

> \- `de Terre is obviously short for "pomme de terre", French for potato. Because he looks like a potato. Witty, I know.  
> \- Engrenages, or "Spiral" in English, is a French television and legal drama.  
> \- Jacques Vergès was an anticolonialist, communist lawyer who earned fame for defending a long string of controversial well-known clients. He earned my respect with the line "I'd even defend Bush, but only if he agrees to plead guilty."


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